Oy Gevalt

Premillennialists tend to give Jews the willies, but if there’s anyone who drives them round the bend, it’s Jews for Jesus, aka Messianic Jews. And as for the evangelicals who lionize these traitorous fifth columnists (so to speak), they are deeply distrusted and roundly condemned. So it’s not really a good thing for the McCain campaign’s Jewish outreach that his new ticket-mate was on hand when her church threw a little fete for David Brickner, executive director of Jews for Jesus, which her pastor called “a ministry that is out on the leading edge in a pressing, demanding area of witnessing and evangelism.” John Hagee, whatever else you might say about him, is on the opposite end of the evangelical spectrum when it comes to converting the Jews. Where does that leave Sarah Palin? Saying that she doesn’t share Brickner’s view that violence against Israelis is God’s punishment for failing to accept Jesus. Well, that’s good to hear. Andrew Sullivan’s on the case, giving the Jewish establishment hell for failing to express its usual distress at such manifestations; so far as he’s concerned, it’s curtains for McCain in Florida. In a less partisan mode, the Jewish Weekruns the traps and finds that the Palin nomination is indeed a big McCain problem. My sense is that that’s true not because of anything it says to Jews about McCain’s own views but because 1) it’s evidence that the GOP is still the party of Falwell, Robertson, and Dobson; and 2) it means there will be One of Them in the Oval Office should the old guy be gathered unto his fathers before his term is run. Revised prediction on the Jewish vote in November: Obama, 70 percent; McCain, 28 percent, Nader 2 percent.

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Mark Silk is Professor of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and director of the college's Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life. He is a Contributing Editor of the Religion News Service